I once saw a cow that had lost her cud. How forlorn and desolateand sick at heart that cow looked! No more rumination, no more ofthat second and finer mastication, no more of that sweet and juicyreverie under the spreading trees, or in the stall. Then the farmertook an elder and scraped the bark and put something with it, andmade the cow a cud, and, after due waiting, the experiment took, aresponse came back, and the mysterious machinery was once more inmotion, and the cow was herself again.

Have you, O poet, or essayist, or story-writer, never lost yourcud, and wandered about days and weeks without being able to starta single thought or an image that tasted good,--your literaryappetite dull or all gone, and the conviction daily growing that itwas all over with you in that direction? A little elder-bark,something fresh and bitter from the woods, is about the best thingyou can take.

XIV

Notwithstanding what I have elsewhere said about the desolation ofsnow, when one looks closely it is little more than a thin veilafter all, and takes and repeats the form of whatever it covers.Every path through the fields is just as plain as before. On everyhand the ground sends tokens, and the curves and slopes are not ofthe snow, but of the earth beneath. In like manner the rankestvegetation hides the ground less than we think. Looking across awide valley in the month of July, I have noted that the fields,except the meadows, had a ruddy tinge, and that corn, which near athand seemed to completely envelop the soil, at that distance gaveonly a slight shade of green. The color of the ground everywherepredominated, and I doubt not that, if we could see the earth froma point sufficiently removed, as from the moon, its ruddy hue, likethat of Mars, would alone be visible.

What is a man but a miniature earth, with many disguises in the wayof manners, possessions, dissemblances? Yet through all--throughall the work of his hands and all the thoughts of his mind--howsurely the ground quality of him, the fundamental hue, whether itbe this or that, makes itself felt and is alone important!

XV

Men follow their noses, it is said. I have wondered why the Greekdid not follow his nose in architecture,--did not copy those archesthat spring from it as from a pier, and support his brow,--butalways and everywhere used the post and the lintel. There wassomething in that face that has never reappeared in the humancountenance. I am thinking especially of that straight, strongprofile. Is it really godlike, or is this impression the result ofassociation? But any suggestion or reminiscence of it in themodern face at once gives one the idea of strength. It is a facestrong in the loins, or it suggests a high, elastic instep. It isthe face of order and proportion. Those arches are the symbols oflaw and self-control. The point of greatest interest is the unionof the nose with the brow,--that strong, high embankment; it makesthe bridge from the ideal to the real sure and easy. All theGreek's ideas passed readily into form. In the modern face thearches are more or less crushed, and the nose is severed from thebrow,--hence the abstract and the analytic; hence the preponderanceof the speculative intellect over creative power.

XVI

I have thought that the boy is the only true lover of Nature, andthat we, who make such a dead set at studying and admiring her,come very wide of the mark. "The nonchalance of a boy who is sureof his dinner," says our Emerson, "is the healthy attitude ofhumanity." The boy is a part of Nature; he is as indifferent, ascareless, as vagrant as she. He browses, he digs, he hunts, heclimbs, he halloes, he feeds on roots and greens and mast. He usesthings roughly and without sentiment. The coolness with which boyswill drown dogs or cats, or hang them to trees, or murder youngbirds, or torture frogs or squirrels, is like Nature's ownmercilessness.

Certain it is that we often get some of the best touches of naturefrom children. Childhood is a world by itself, and we listen tochildren when they frankly speak out of it with a strange interest.There is such a freedom from responsibility and from worldlywisdom,--it is heavenly wisdom. There is no sentiment in children,because there is no ruin; nothing has gone to decay about themyet,--not a leaf or a twig. Until he is well into his teens, andsometimes later, a boy is like a bean-pod before the fruit hasdeveloped,--indefinite, succulent, rich in possibilities which areonly vaguely outlined. He is a pericarp merely. How rudimental areall his ideas! I knew a boy who began his school composition onswallows by saying there were two kinds of swallows,--chimneyswallows and swallows.

Girls come to themselves sooner; are indeed, from the first, moredefinite and "translatable."

XVII

Who will write the natural history of the boy? One of the firstpoints to be taken account of is his clannishness. The boys of oneneighborhood are always pitted against those of an adjoiningneighborhood, or of one end of the town against those of the otherend. A bridge, a river, a railroad track, are always boundaries ofhostile or semi-hostile tribes. The boys that go up the road fromthe country school hoot derisively at those that go down the road,and not infrequently add the insult of stones; and the down-roadersreturn the hooting and the missiles with interest.

Often there is open war, and the boys meet and have regularbattles. A few years since, the boys of two rival towns on oppositesides of the Ohio River became so belligerent that the authoritieshad to interfere. Whenever an Ohio boy was caught on the WestVirginia side of the river, he was unmercifully beaten; and when aWest Virginia boy was discovered on the Ohio side, he was pouncedupon in the same manner. One day a vast number of boys, about onehundred and fifty on a side, met by appointment upon the ice andengaged in a pitched battle. Every conceivable missile was used,including pistols. The battle, says the local paper, raged withfury for about two hours. One boy received a wound behind the ear,from the effects of which he died the next morning. More recentlythe boys of a large manufacturing town of New Jersey were dividedinto two hostile clans that came into frequent collision. OneSaturday both sides mustered their forces, and a regular fightensued, one boy here also losing his life from the encounter.

Every village and settlement is at times the scene of theseyouthful collisions When a new boy appears in the village, or atthe country school, how the other boys crowd around him and takehis measure, or pick at him and insult him to try his mettle!

I knew a boy, twelve or thirteen years old, who was sent to help adrover with some cattle as far as a certain village ten miles fromhis home. After the place was reached, and while the boy waseating his cracker and candies, he strolled about the village, andfell in with some other boys playing upon a bridge. In a shorttime a large number of children of all sizes had collected upon thebridge. The new-comer was presently challenged by the boys of hisown age to jump with them. This he readily did, and cleared theirfarthest mark. Then he gave them a sample of his stone-throwing,and at this pastime he also far surpassed his competitors. Beforelong, the feeling of the crowd began to set against him, showingitself first in the smaller fry, who began half playfully to throwpebbles and lumps of dry earth at him. Then they would run upslyly and strike him with sticks. Presently the large ones beganto tease him in like manner, till the contagion of hostilityspread, and the whole pack was arrayed against the strange boy. Hekept them at bay for a few moments with his stick, till, thefeeling mounting higher and higher, he broke through their ranks,and fled precipitately toward home, with the throng of little andbig at his heels. Gradually the girls and smaller boys droppedbehind, till at the end of the first fifty rods only two boys ofabout his own size, with wrath and determination in their faces,kept up the pursuit. But to these he added the final insult ofbeating them at running also, and reached, much blown, a pointbeyond which they refused to follow.

The world the boy lives in is separate and distinct from the worldthe man lives in. It is a world inhabited only by boys. No eventsare important or of any moment save those affecting boys. How theyignore the presence of their elders on the street, shouting outtheir invitations, their appointments, their pass-words from ourmidst, as from the veriest solitude! They have peculiar calls,whistles, signals, by which they communicate with each other atlong distances, like birds or wild creatures. And there is asgenuine a wildness about these notes and calls as about those of afox or a coon.

The boy is a savage, a barbarian, in his taste,--devouring roots,leaves, bark, unripe fruit; and in the kind of music or discord hedelights in,--of harmony he has no perception. He has his fashionsthat spread from city to city. In one of our large cities the rageat one time was an old tin can with a string attached, out of whichthey tortured the most savage and ear-splitting discords. Thepolice were obliged to interfere and suppress the nuisance. Onanother occasion, at Christmas, they all came forth with tin horns,and nearly drove the town distracted with the hideous uproar.

Another savage trait of the boy is his untruthfulness. Corner him,and the chances are ten to one he will lie his way out. Conscienceis a plant of slow growth in the boy. If caught in one lie, heinvents another. I know a boy who was in the habit of eating applesin school. His teacher finally caught him in the act, and, withoutremoving his eye from him, called him to the middle of the floor.

"I saw you this time," said the teacher.

"Saw me what?" said the boy innocently.

"Bite that apple," replied the teacher.

"No, sir," said the rascal.

"Open your mouth;" and from its depths the teacher, with his thumband finger, took out the piece of apple.

"Did n't know it was there," said the boy, unabashed.

Nearly all the moral sentiment and graces are late in maturing inthe boy. He has no proper self-respect till past his majority. Ofcourse there are exceptions, but they are mostly windfalls. Thegood boys die young. We lament the wickedness and thoughtlessnessof the young vagabonds at the same time that we know it is mainlythe acridity and bitterness of the unripe fruit that we arelamenting.

III A BIRD MEDLEY

People who have not made friends with the birds do not know howmuch they miss. Especially to one living in the country, of stronglocal attachments and an observing turn of mind, does anacquaintance with the birds form a close and invaluable tie. Theonly time I saw Thomas Carlyle, I remember his relating, apropos ofthis subject, that in his earlier days he was sent on a journey toa distant town on some business that gave him much bother andvexation, and that on his way back home, forlorn and dejected, hesuddenly heard the larks singing all about him,--soaring andsinging, just as they did about his father's fields, and itcomforted him and cheered him up amazingly.

Most lovers of the birds can doubtless recall similar experiencesfrom their own lives. Nothing wonts me to a new place more than thebirds. I go, for instance, to take up my abode in the country,--toplant myself upon unfamiliar ground. I know nobody, and nobodyknows me. The roads, the fields, the hills, the streams, the woods,are all strange. I look wistfully upon them, but they know me not.They give back nothing to my yearning gaze. But there, on everyhand, are the long-familiar birds,--the same ones I left behind me,the same ones I knew in my youth,--robins, sparrows, swallows,bobolinks, crows, hawks, high-holes, meadowlarks, all there beforeme, and ready to renew and perpetuate the old associations. Beforemy house is begun, theirs is completed; before I have taken root atall, they are thoroughly established. I do not yet know what kindof apples my apple-trees bear, but there, in the cavity of adecayed limb, the bluebirds are building a nest, and yonder, onthat branch, the social sparrow is busy with hairs and straws. Therobins have tasted the quality of my cherries, and the cedar-birdshave known every red cedar on the place these many years. While myhouse is yet surrounded by its scaffoldings, the phoebe-bird hasbuilt her exquisite mossy nest on a projecting stone beneath theeaves, a robin has filled a niche in the wall with mud and drygrass, the chimney swallows are going out and in the chimney, and apair of house wrens are at home in a snug cavity over the door,and, during an April snowstorm, a number of hermit thrushes havetaken shelter in my unfinished chambers. Indeed, I am in the midstof friends before I fairly know it. The place is not so new as Ihad thought. It is already old; the birds have supplied thememories of many decades of years.

There is something almost pathetic in the fact that the birdsremain forever the same. You grow old, your friends die or move todistant lands, events sweep on, and all things are changed. Yetthere in your garden or orchard are the birds of your boyhood, thesame notes, the same calls, and, to all intents and purposes, theidentical birds endowed with perennial youth. The swallows, thatbuilt so far out of your reach beneath the eaves of your father'sbarn, the same ones now squeak and chatter beneath the eaves ofyour barn. The warblers and shy wood-birds you pursued with suchglee ever so many summers ago, and whose names you taught to somebeloved youth who now, perchance, sleeps amid his native hills, nomarks of time or change cling to them; and when you walk out to thestrange woods, there they are, mocking you with their ever-renewedand joyous youth. The call of the high-holes, the whistle of thequail, the strong piercing note of the meadowlark, the drumming ofthe grouse,--how these sounds ignore the years, and strike on theear with the melody of that springtime when the world was young,and life was all holiday and romance!

During any unusual tension of the feelings or emotions, how thenote or song of a single bird will sink into the memory, and becomeinseparably associated with your grief or joy! Shall I ever againbe able to hear the song of the oriole without being piercedthrough and through? Can it ever be other than a dirge for the deadto me? Day after day, and week after week, this bird whistled andwarbled in a mulberry by the door, while sorrow, like a pall,darkened my day. So loud and persistent was the singer that hisnote teased and worried my excited ear.

"Hearken to yon pine warbler, Singing aloft in the tree! Hearest thou, O traveler! What he singeth to me?

"Not unless God made sharp thine ear With sorrow such as mine, Out of that delicate lay couldst thou Its heavy tale divine."

It is the opinion of some naturalists that birds never die what iscalled a natural death, but come to their end by some murderous oraccidental means; yet I have found sparrows and vireos in thefields and woods dead or dying, that bore no marks of violence; andI remember that once in my childhood a redbird fell down in theyard exhausted, and was brought in by the girl; its bright scarletimage is indelibly stamped upon my recollection. It is not knownthat birds have any distempers like the domestic fowls, but I saw asocial sparrow one day quite disabled by some curious malady thatsuggested a disease that sometimes attacks poultry; one eye wasnearly put out by a scrofulous-looking sore, and on the last jointof one wing there was a large tumorous or fungous growth thatcrippled the bird completely. On another occasion I picked up onethat appeared well, but could not keep its centre of gravity whenin flight, and so fell to the ground.

One reason why dead birds and animals are so rarely found is, thaton the approach of death their instinct prompts them to creep awayin some hole or under some cover, where they will be least liableto fall a prey to their natural enemies. It is doubtful if any ofthe game-birds, like the pigeon and grouse, ever die of old age, orthe semi-game-birds, like the bobolink, or the "century living"crow; but in what other form can death overtake the hummingbird, oreven the swift and the barn swallow? Such are true birds of theair; they may be occasionally lost at sea during their migrations,but, so far as I know, they are not preyed upon by any otherspecies.

The valley of the Hudson, I find, forms a great natural highway forthe birds, as do doubtless the Connecticut, the Susquehanna, theDelaware, and all other large water-courses running north andsouth. The birds love an easy way, and in the valleys of the riversthey find a road already graded for them; and they abound more insuch places throughout the season than they do farther inland. Theswarms of robins that come to us in early spring are a delight tobehold. In one of his poems Emerson speaks of

"April's bird, Blue-coated, flying before from tree to tree;"

but April's bird with me is the robin, brisk, vociferous, musical,dotting every field, and larking it in every grove; he is as easilyatop at this season as the bobolink is a month or two later. Thetints of April are ruddy and brown,--the new furrow and theleafless trees,--and these are the tints of its dominant bird.

>From my dining-room window I look, or did look, out upon a longstretch of smooth meadow, and as pretty a spring sight as I everwish to behold was this field, sprinkled all over with robins,their red breasts turned toward the morning sun, or their pertforms sharply outlined against lingering patches of snow. Everymorning for weeks I had those robins for breakfast; but what theyhad I never could find out.

After the leaves are out, and gayer colors come into fashion, therobin takes a back seat. He goes to housekeeping in the old apple-tree, or, what he likes better, the cherry-tree. A pair rearedtheir domestic altar (of mud and dry grass) in one of the lattertrees, where I saw much of them. The cock took it upon himself tokeep the tree free of all other robins during cherry time, and itsbranches were the scene of some lively tussles every hour in theday. The innocent visitor would scarcely alight before the jealouscock was upon him; but while he was thrusting the intruder out atone side, a second would be coming in on the other. He managed,however, to protect his cherries very well, but had so little timeto eat the fruit himself that we got fully our share.

I have frequently seen the robin courting, and have always beenastonished and amused at the utter coldness and indifference of thefemale. The females of every species of bird, however, I believe,have this in common,--they are absolutely free from coquetry, orany airs and wiles whatever. In most cases, Nature has given thesong and the plumage to the other sex, and all the embellishing andacting is done by the male bird.

I am always at home when I see the passenger pigeon. Few spectaclesplease me more than to see clouds of these birds sweeping acrossthe sky, and few sounds are more agreeable to my ear than theirlively piping and calling in the spring woods. They come in suchmultitudes, they people the whole air; they cover townships, andmake the solitary places gay as with a festival. The naked woodsare suddenly blue as with fluttering ribbons and scarfs, and vocalas with the voices of children. Their arrival is always unexpected.We know April will bring the robins and May the bobolinks, but wedo not know that either they or any other month will bring thepassenger pigeon. Sometimes years elapse and scarcely a flock isseen. Then, of a sudden, some March or April they come pouring overthe horizon from the south or southwest, and for a few days theland is alive with them.

The whole race seems to be collected in a few vast swarms orassemblages. Indeed, I have sometimes thought there was only onesuch in the United States, and that it moved in squads, andregiments, and brigades, and divisions, like a giant army. Thescouting and foraging squads are not unusual, and every few yearswe see larger bodies of them, but rarely indeed do we witness thespectacle of the whole vast tribe in motion. Sometimes we hear ofthem in Virginia, or Kentucky and Tennessee; then in Ohio orPennsylvania; then in New York; then in Canada or Michigan orMissouri. They are followed from point to point, and from State toState, by human sharks, who catch and shoot them for market.

A year ago last April, the pigeons flew for two or three days upand down the Hudson. In long bowing lines, or else in dense masses,they moved across the sky. It was not the whole army, but I shouldthink at least one corps of it; I had not seen such a flight ofpigeons since my boyhood. I went up to the top of the house, thebetter to behold the winged procession. The day seemed memorableand poetic in which such sights occurred.

[Footnote: This proved to be the last flight of the pigeons in the valley of the Hudson. The whole tribe has now (1895) been nearly exterminated by pot-hunters. The few that still remain appear to be scattered through the Northern States in small, loose flocks.]

While I was looking at the pigeons, a flock of wild geese went by,harrowing the sky northward. The geese strike a deeper chord thanthe pigeons. Level and straight they go as fate to its mark. Icannot tell what emotions these migrating birds awaken in me,--thegeese especially. One seldom sees more than a flock or two in aseason, and what a spring token it is! The great bodies are inmotion. It is like the passage of a victorious army. No longer inchby inch does spring come, but these geese advance the standardacross zones at one pull. How my desire goes with them; howsomething in me, wild and migratory, plumes itself and followsfast!

"Steering north, with raucous cry, Through tracts and provinces of sky, Every night alighting down In new landscapes of romance, Where darkling feed the clamorous clans By lonely lakes to men unknown."

Dwelling upon these sights, I am reminded that the seeing of springcome, not only upon the great wings of the geese and the lesserwings of the pigeons and birds, but in the many more subtle andindirect signs and mediums, is also a part of the compensation ofliving in the country. I enjoy not less what may be called thenegative side of spring,-- those dark, dank, dissolving days,yellow sposh and mud and water everywhere,--yet who can stay longindoors? The humidity is soft and satisfying to the smell, and tothe face and hands, and, for the first time for months, there isthe fresh odor of the earth. The air is full of the notes and callsof the first birds. The domestic fowls refuse their accustomed foodand wander far from the barn. Is it something winter has left, orspring has dropped, that they pick up? And what is it that holds meso long standing in the yard or in the fields? Something besidesthe ice and snow melts and runs away with the spring floods.

The little sparrows and purple finches are so punctual inannouncing spring, that some seasons one wonders how they knowwithout looking in the almanac, for surely there are no signs ofspring out of doors. Yet they will strike up as cheerily amid thedriving snow as if they had just been told that to-morrow is thefirst day of March. About the same time I notice the potatoes inthe cellar show signs of sprouting. They, too, find out so quicklywhen spring is near. Spring comes by two routes,--in the air andunderground, and often gets here by the latter course first. Sheundermines Winter when outwardly his front is nearly as bold asever. I have known the trees to bud long before, by outwardappearances, one would expect them to. The frost was gone from theground before the snow was gone from the surface.

But Winter hath his birds also; some of them such tiny bodies thatone wonders how they withstand the giant cold,--but they do. Birdslive on highly concentrated food,--the fine seeds of weeds andgrasses, and the eggs and larvae of insects. Such food must be verystimulating and heating. A gizzard full of ants, for instance,what spiced and seasoned extract is equal to that? Think whatvirtue there must be in an ounce of gnats or mosquitoes, or in thefine mysterious food the chickadee and the brown creeper gather inthe winter woods! It is doubtful if these birds ever freeze whenfuel enough can be had to keep their little furnaces going. And, asthey get their food entirely from the limbs and trunks of trees,like the woodpeckers, their supply is seldom interfered with by thesnow. The worst annoyance must be the enameling of ice our winterwoods sometimes get.

Indeed, the food question seems to be the only serious one with thebirds. Give them plenty to eat, and no doubt the majority of themwould face our winters. I believe all the woodpeckers are winterbirds, except the high-hole or yellow-hammer, and he obtains thegreater part of his subsistence from the ground, and is not awoodpecker at all in his habits of feeding. Were it not that it hasrecourse to budding, the ruffed grouse would be obliged to migrate.The quail--a bird, no doubt, equally hardy, but whose food is atthe mercy of the snow--is frequently cut off by our severe winterswhen it ventures to brave them, which is not often. Where plenty ofthe berries of the red cedar can be had, the cedar-bird will passthe winter in New York. The old ornithologists say the bluebirdmigrates to Bermuda; but in the winter of 1874-75, severe as itwas, a pair of them wintered with me eighty miles north of New Yorkcity. They seem to have been decided in their choice by theattractions of my rustic porch and the fruit of a sugar-berry tree(celtis--a kind of tree-lotus) that stood in front of it. Theylodged in the porch and took their meals in the tree. Indeed, theybecame regular lotus-eaters. Punctually at dusk they were in theirplaces on a large laurel root in the top of the porch, whence,however, they were frequently routed by an indignant broom that wasjealous of the neatness of the porch floor. But the pair would nottake any hints of this kind, and did not give up their quarters inthe porch or their lotus berries till spring.

Many times during the winter the sugar-berry tree was visited by aflock of cedar-birds that also wintered in the vicinity. At suchtimes it was amusing to witness the pretty wrath of the bluebirds,scolding and threatening the intruders, and begrudging them everyberry they ate. The bluebird cannot utter a harsh or unpleasingnote. Indeed, he seems to have but one language, one speech, forboth love and war, and the expression of his indignation is nearlyas musical as his song. The male frequently made hostiledemonstrations toward the cedar-birds, but did not openly attackthem, and, with his mate, appeared to experience great relief whenthe poachers had gone.

I had other company in my solitude also, among the rest adistinguished arrival from the far north, the pine grosbeak, a birdrarely seen in these parts, except now and then a single specimen.But in the winter of 1875, heralding the extreme cold weather, andno doubt in consequence of it, there was a large incursion of theminto this State and New England. They attracted the notice of thecountry people everywhere. I first saw them early in December aboutthe head of the Delaware. I was walking along a cleared ridge withmy gun, just at sundown, when I beheld two strange birds sitting ina small maple. On bringing one of them down, I found it was a birdI had never before seen; in color and shape like the purple finch,but quite as large again in size. From its heavy beak, I at oncerecognized it as belonging to the family of grosbeaks. A few dayslater I saw large numbers of them in the woods, on the ground, andin the trees. And still later, and on till February, they were verynumerous on the Hudson, coming all about my house,--more familiareven than the little snowbird, hopping beneath the windows, andlooking up at me apparently with as much curiosity as I looked downupon them. They fed on the buds of the sugar maples and upon frozenapples in the orchard. They were mostly young birds and females,colored very much like the common sparrow, with now and thenvisible the dull carmine-colored head and neck of an old male.

Other northern visitors that tarried with me the same winter werethe tree or Canada sparrow and the redpoll, the former a birdlarger than the social sparrow or hair-bird, but otherwise muchresembling it, and distinguishable by a dark spot in the middle ofits breast; the latter a bird the size and shape of the commongoldfinch, with the same manner of flight and nearly the same noteor cry, but darker than the winter plumage of the goldfinch, andwith a red crown and a tinge of red on the breast. Little bands ofthese two species lurked about the barnyard all winter, picking upthe hayseed, the sparrow sometimes venturing in on the haymow whenthe supply outside was short. I felt grateful to them for theircompany. They gave a sort of ornithological air to every errand Ihad to the barn.

Though a number of birds face our winters, and by various shiftsworry through till spring, some of them permanent residents, andsome of them visitors from the far north, yet there is but onegenuine snow bird, nursling of the snow, and that is the snowbunting, a bird that seems proper to this season, heralding thecoming storm, sweeping by on bold and rapid wing, and calling andchirping as cheerily as the songsters of May. In its plumage itreflects the winter landscape,--an expanse of white surmounted orstreaked with gray and brown; a field of snow with a line of woodsor a tinge of stubble. It fits into the scene, and does not appearto lead a beggarly and disconsolate life, like most of our winterresidents. During the ice-harvesting on the river, I see themflitting about among the gangs of men, or floating on the cakes ofice, picking and scratching amid the droppings of the horses. Theylove the stack and hay-barn in the distant field, where the farmerfodders his cattle upon the snow, and every red-root, ragweed, orpigweed left standing in the fall adds to their winter stores.

Though this bird, and one or two others, like the chickadee andnuthatch, are more or less complacent and cheerful during thewinter, yet no bird can look our winters in the face and sing, asdo so many of the English birds. Several species in Great Britain,their biographers tell us, sing the winter through, except duringthe severest frosts; but with us, as far south as Virginia, and,for aught I know, much farther, the birds are tuneless at thisseason. The owls, even, do not hoot, nor the hawks scream.

Among the birds that tarry briefly with us in the spring on theirway to Canada and beyond, there is none I behold with so muchpleasure as the white-crowned sparrow. I have an eye out for himall through April and the first week in May. He is the rarest andmost beautiful of the sparrow kind. He is crowned, as some hero orvictor in the games. He is usually in company with his congener,the white-throated sparrow, but seldom more than in the proportionof one to twenty of the latter. Contrasted with this bird, he lookslike its more fortunate brother, upon whom some special distinctionhas been conferred, and who is, from the egg, of finer make andquality. His sparrow color of ashen gray and brown is very clearand bright, and his form graceful. His whole expression, however,culminates in a singular manner in his crown. The various tints ofthe bird are brought to a focus here and intensified, the lighterones becoming white, and the deeper ones nearly black. There is thesuggestion of a crest, also, from a habit the bird has of slightlyelevating this part of its plumage, as if to make more conspicuousits pretty markings. They are great scratchers, and will oftenremain several minutes scratching in one place, like a hen. Yet,unlike the hen and like all hoppers, they scratch with both feet atonce, which is by no means the best way to scratch.

The white-throats often sing during their sojourning both in falland spring; but only on one occasion have I ever heard any part ofthe song of the white-crowned, and that proceeded from what I tookto be a young male, one October morning, just as the sun wasrising. It was pitched very low, like a half-forgotten air, but itwas very sweet. It was the song of the vesper sparrow and thewhite-throat in one. In his breeding haunts he must be a superiorsongster, but he is very chary of his music while on his travels.

The sparrows are all meek and lowly birds. They are of the grass,the fences, the low bushes, the weedy wayside places. Nature hasdenied them all brilliant tints, but she has given them sweet andmusical voices. Theirs are the quaint and simple lullaby songs ofchildhood. The white-throat has a timid, tremulous strain, thatissues from the low bushes or from behind the fence, where itscradle is hid. The song sparrow modulates its simple ditty assoftly as the lining of its own nest. The vesper sparrow has onlypeace and gentleness in its strain.

What pretty nests, too, the sparrows build! Can anything be moreexquisite than a sparrow's nest under a grassy or mossy bank? Whatcare the bird has taken not to disturb one straw or spear of grass,or thread of moss! You cannot approach it and put your hand into itwithout violating the place more or less, and yet the littlearchitect has wrought day after day and left no marks. There hasbeen an excavation, and yet no grain of earth appears to have beenmoved. If the nest had slowly and silently grown like the grass andthe moss, it could not have been more nicely adjusted to its placeand surroundings. There is absolutely nothing to tell the eye it isthere. Generally a few spears of dry grass fall down from the turfabove and form a slight screen before it. How commonly and coarselyit begins, blending with the debris that lies about, and how itrefines and comes into form as it approaches the centre, which ismodeled so perfectly and lined so softly! Then, when the fullcomplement of eggs is laid, and incubation has fairly begun, what asweet, pleasing little mystery the silent old bank holds!

The song sparrow, whose nest I have been describing, displays amore marked individuality in its song than any bird with which I amacquainted. Birds of the same species generally all sing alike, butI have observed numerous song sparrows with songs peculiarly theirown. Last season, the whole summer through, one sang about mygrounds like this: _swee-e-t, swee-e-t, swee-e-t, bitter._ Dayafter day, from May to September, I heard this strain, which Ithought a simple but very profound summing-up of life, and wonderedhow the little bird had learned it so quickly. The present season,I heard another with a song equally original, but not so easilyworded. Among a large troop of them in April, my attention wasattracted to one that was a master songster,--some Shelley orTennyson among his kind. The strain was remarkably prolonged,intricate, and animated, and far surpassed anything I ever beforeheard from that source.

But the most noticeable instance of departure from the standardsong of a species I ever knew of was in the case of a wood thrush.The bird sang, as did the sparrow, the whole season through, at thefoot of my lot near the river. The song began correctly and endedcorrectly; but interjected into it about midway was a loud,piercing, artificial note, at utter variance with the rest of thestrain. When my ear first caught this singular note, I started out,not a little puzzled, to make, as I supposed, a new acquaintance,but had not gone far when I discovered whence it proceeded. Brassamid gold, or pebbles amid pearls, are not more out of place thanwas this discordant scream or cry in the melodious strain of thewood thrush. It pained and startled the ear. It seemed as if theinstrument of the bird was not under control, or else that one notewas sadly out of tune, and, when its turn came, instead of givingforth one of those sounds that are indeed like pearls, it shockedthe ear with a piercing discord. Yet the singer appeared entirelyunconscious of the defect; or had he grown used to it, or had hisfriends persuaded him that it was a variation to be coveted?Sometimes, after the brood had hatched and the bird's pride was atits full, he would make a little triumphal tour of the locality,coming from under the hill quite up to the house, and flaunting hiscracked instrument in the face of whoever would listen. He did notreturn again the next season; or, if he did, the malformation ofhis song was gone.

I have noticed that the bobolink does not sing the same indifferent localities. In New Jersey it has one song; on theHudson, a slight variation of the same; and on the high grass-landsof the interior of the State, quite a different strain,--clearer,more distinctly articulated, and running off with more sparkle andliltingness. It reminds one of the clearer mountain air and thetranslucent spring-water of those localities. I never could makeout what the bobolink says in New Jersey, but in certain districtsin this State his enunciation is quite distinct. Sometimes hebegins with the word _gegue, gegue._ Then again, more fully, _betrue to me, Clarsy, be true to me, Clarsy, Clarsy,_ thence fulltilt into his inimitable song, interspersed in which the words_kick your slipper, kick your slipper,_ and temperance, temperance(the last with a peculiar nasal resonance), are plainly heard. Atits best, it is a remarkable performance, a unique performance, asit contains not the slightest hint or suggestion, either in tone ormanner or effect, of any other bird-song to be heard. The bobolinkhas no mate or parallel in any part of the world. He stands alone.There is no closely allied species. He is not a lark, nor a finch,nor a warbler, nor a thrush, nor a starling (though classed withthe starlings by late naturalists). He is an exception to manywell-known rules. He is the only ground-bird known to me of markedand conspicuous plumage. He is the only black and white field-birdwe have east of the Mississippi, and, what is still more odd, he isblack beneath and white above,--the reverse of the fact in allother cases. Preëminently a bird of the meadow during the breedingseason, and associated with clover and daisies and buttercups as noother bird is, he yet has the look of an interloper or a newcomer,and not of one to the manner born.

The bobolink has an unusually full throat, which may help accountfor his great power of song. No bird has yet been found that couldimitate him, or even repeat or suggest a single note, as if hissong were the product of a new set of organs. There is a vibrationabout it, and a rapid running over the keys, that is the despair ofother songsters. It is said that the mockingbird is dumb in thepresence of the bobolink. My neighbor has an English skylark thatwas hatched and reared in captivity. The bird is a most persistentand vociferous songster, and fully as successful a mimic as themockingbird. It pours out a strain that is a regular mosaic ofnearly all the bird-notes to be heard, its own proper lark songforming a kind of bordering for the whole. The notes of the phoebe-bird, the purple finch, the swallow, the yellowbird, the kingbird,the robin, and others, are rendered with perfect distinctness andaccuracy, but not a word of the bobolink's, though the lark musthave heard its song every day for four successive summers. It wasthe one conspicuous note in the fields around that the lark made noattempt to plagiarize. He could not steal the bobolink's thunder.

The lark is a more marvelous songster than the bobolink only onaccount of his soaring flight and the sustained copiousness of hissong. His note is rasping and harsh, in point of melody, whencompared with the bobolink's. When caged and near at hand, thelark's song is positively disagreeable, it is so loud and full ofsharp, aspirated sounds. But high in air above the broad downs,poured out without interruption for many minutes together, it isvery agreeable.

The bird among us that is usually called a lark, namely, themeadowlark, but which our later classifiers say is no lark at all,has nearly the same quality of voice as the English skylark,--loud,piercing, z-z-ing; and during the mating season it frequentlyindulges while on the wing in a brief song that is quite lark-like.It is also a bird of the stubble, and one of the last to retreat onthe approach of winter.

The habits of many of our birds are slowly undergoing a change.Their migrations are less marked. With the settlement andcultivation of the country, the means of subsistence of nearlyevery species are vastly increased. Insects are more numerous, andseeds of weeds and grasses more abundant. They become more and moredomestic, like the English birds. The swallows have nearly all lefttheir original abodes--hollow trees, and cliffs, and rocks--forhuman habitations and their environments. Where did the barnswallow nest before the country was settled? The chimney swallownested in hollow trees, and, perhaps, occasionally resorts thitheryet. But the chimney, notwithstanding the smoke, seems to suit histaste best. In the spring, before they have paired, I think theseswallows sometimes pass the night in the woods, but not if an old,disused chimney is handy.

One evening in early May, my attention was arrested by a band ofthem containing several hundreds, perhaps a thousand, circlingabout near a large, tall, disused chimney in a secluded place inthe country. They were very lively, and chippering, and diving in amost extraordinary manner. They formed a broad continuous circlemany rods in diameter. Gradually the circle contracted and nearedthe chimney. Presently some of the birds as they came round beganto dive toward it, and the chippering was more animated than ever.Then a few ventured in; in a moment more, the air at the mouth ofthe chimney was black with the stream of descending swallows. Whenthe passage began to get crowded, the circle lifted and the rest ofthe birds continued their flight, giving those inside time todispose of themselves. Then the influx began again, and was kept uptill the crowd became too great, when it cleared as before. Thus byinstallments, or in layers, the swallows were packed into thechimney until the last one was stowed away. Passing by the place afew days afterward, I saw a board reaching from the roof of thebuilding to the top of the chimney, and imagined some curiousperson or some predaceous boy had been up to take a peep inside,and see how so many swallows could dispose of themselves in such aspace. It would have been an interesting spectacle to see thememerge from the chimney in the morning.

IV APRIL

If we represent the winter of our northern climate by a ruggedsnow-clad mountain, and summer by a broad fertile plain, then theintermediate belt, the hilly and breezy uplands, will stand forspring, with March reaching well up into the region of the snows,and April lapping well down upon the greening fields and unloosenedcurrents, not beyond the limits of winter's sallying storms, butwell within the vernal zone,--within the reach of the warm breathand subtle, quickening influences of the plain below. At its best,April is the tenderest of tender salads made crisp by ice or snowwater. Its type is the first spear of grass. The senses--sight,hearing, smell--are as hungry for its delicate and almost spiritualtokens as the cattle are for the first bite of its fields. How ittouches one and makes him both glad and sad! The voices of thearriving birds, the migrating fowls, the clouds of pigeons sweepingacross the sky or filling the woods, the elfin horn of the firsthoney-bee venturing abroad in the middle of the day, the clearpiping of the little frogs in the marshes at sundown, the campfirein the sugar-bush, the smoke seen afar rising over the trees, thetinge of green that comes so suddenly on the sunny knolls andslopes, the full translucent streams, the waxing and warming sun,--how these things and others like them are noted by the eager eyeand ear! April is my natal month, and I am born again into newdelight and new surprises at each return of it. Its name has anindescribable charm to me. Its two syllables are like the calls ofthe first birds,--like that of the phoebe-bird, or of themeadowlark. Its very snows are fertilizing, and are called the poorman's manure.

Then its odors! I am thrilled by its fresh and indescribableodors,--the perfume of the bursting sod, of the quickened roots androotlets, of the mould under the leaves, of the fresh furrows. Noother month has odors like it. The west wind the other day camefraught with a perfume that was to the sense of smell what a wildand delicate strain of music is to the ear. It was almosttranscendental. I walked across the hill with my nose in the airtaking it in. It lasted for two days. I imagined it came from thewillows of a distant swamp, whose catkins were affording the beestheir first pollen: or did it come from much farther,--from beyondthe horizon, the accumulated breath of innumerable farms andbudding forests? The main characteristic of these April odors istheir uncloying freshness. They are not sweet, they are oftenerbitter, they are penetrating and lyrical. I know well the odors ofMay and June, of the world of meadows and orchards bursting intobloom, but they are not so ineffable and immaterial and sostimulating to the sense as the incense of April.

The season of which I speak does not correspond with the April ofthe almanac in all sections of our vast geography. It answers toMarch in Virginia and Maryland, while in parts of New York and NewEngland it laps well over into May. It begins when the partridgedrums, when the hyla pipes, when the shad start up the rivers, whenthe grass greens in the spring runs, and it ends when the leavesare unfolding and the last snowflake dissolves in midair. It may bethe first of May before the first swallow appears, before the whip-poor-will is heard, before the wood thrush sings; but it is Aprilas long as there is snow upon the mountains, no matter what thealmanac may say. Our April is, in fact, a kind of Alpine summer,full of such contrasts and touches of wild, delicate beauty as noother season affords. The deluded citizen fancies there is nothingenjoyable in the country till June, and so misses the freshest,tenderest part. It is as if one should miss strawberries and beginhis fruit-eating with melons and peaches. These last are good,--supremely so, they are melting and luscious,--but nothing sothrills and penetrates the taste, and wakes up and teases thepapillae of the tongue, as the uncloying strawberry. What midsummersweetness half so distracting as its brisk sub-acid flavor, andwhat splendor of full-leaved June can stir the blood like the bestof leafless April?

One characteristic April feature, and one that delights me verymuch, is the perfect emerald of the spring runs while the fieldsare yet brown and sere,--strips and patches of the most vividvelvet green on the slopes and in the valleys. How the eye grazesthere, and is filled and refreshed! I had forgotten what a markedfeature this was until I recently rode in an open wagon for threedays through a mountainous, pastoral country, remarkable for itsfine springs. Those delicious green patches are yet in my eye. Thefountains flowed with May. Where no springs occurred, there werehints and suggestions of springs about the fields and by theroadside in the freshened grass,--sometimes overflowing a space inthe form of an actual fountain. The water did not quite get to thesurface in such places, but sent its influence.

The fields of wheat and rye, too, how they stand out of the Aprillandscape,--great green squares on a field of brown or gray!

Among April sounds there is none more welcome or suggestive to methan the voice of the little frogs piping in the marshes. No bird-note can surpass it as a spring token; and as it is not mentioned,to my knowledge, by the poets and writers of other lands, I amready to believe it is characteristic of our season alone. You maybe sure April has really come when this little amphibian creeps outof the mud and inflates its throat. We talk of the bird inflatingits throat, but you should see this tiny minstrel inflate _its_throat, which becomes like a large bubble, and suggests a drummer-boy with his drum slung very high. In this drum, or by the aid ofit, the sound is produced. Generally the note is very feeble atfirst, as if the frost was not yet all out of the creature'sthroat, and only one voice will be heard, some prophet bolder thanall the rest, or upon whom the quickening ray of spring has firstfallen. And it often happens that he is stoned for his pains by theyet unpacified element, and is compelled literally to "shut up"beneath a fall of snow or a heavy frost. Soon, however, he lifts uphis voice again with more confidence, and is joined by others andstill others, till in due time, say toward the last of the month,there is a shrill musical uproar, as the sun is setting, in everymarsh and bog in the land. It is a plaintive sound, and I haveheard people from the city speak of it as lonesome and depressing,but to the lover of the country it is a pure spring melody. Thelittle piper will sometimes climb a bulrush, to which he clingslike a sailor to a mast, and send forth his shrill call. There is aSouthern species, heard when you have reached the Potomac, whosenote is far more harsh and crackling. To stand on the verge of aswamp vocal with these, pains and stuns the ear. The call of theNorthern species is far more tender and musical. [Footnote: TheSouthern species is called the green hyla. I have since heard themin my neighborhood on the Hudson.]

Then is there anything like a perfect April morning? One hardlyknows what the sentiment of it is, but it is something verydelicious. It is youth and hope. It is a new earth and a new sky.How the air transmits sounds, and what an awakening, propheticcharacter all sounds have! The distant barking of a dog, or thelowing of a cow, or the crowing of a cock, seems from out the heartof Nature, and to be a call to come forth. The great sun appears tohave been reburnished, and there is something in his first glanceabove the eastern hills, and the way his eye-beams dart right andleft and smite the rugged mountains into gold, that quickens thepulse and inspires the heart.

Across the fields in the early morning I hear some of the rareApril birds,--the chewink and the brown thrasher. The robin, thebluebird, the song sparrow, the phoebe-bird, come in March; butthese two ground-birds are seldom heard till toward the last ofApril. The ground-birds are all tree-singers or air-singers; theymust have an elevated stage to speak from. Our long-tailed thrush,or thrasher, like its congeners the catbird and the mockingbird,delights in a high branch of some solitary tree, whence it willpour out its rich and intricate warble for an hour together. Thisbird is the great American chipper. There is no other bird that Iknow of that can chip with such emphasis and military decision asthis yellow-eyed songster. It is like the click of a giant gunlock.Why is the thrasher so stealthy? It always seems to be going abouton tiptoe. I never knew it to steal anything, and yet it skulks andhides like a fugitive from justice. One never sees it flying aloftin the air and traversing the world openly, like most birds, but itdarts along fences and through bushes as if pursued by a guiltyconscience. Only when the musical fit is upon it does it come upinto full view, and invite the world to hear and behold.

The chewink is a shy bird also, but not stealthy. It is veryinquisitive, and sets up a great scratching among the leaves,apparently to attract your attention. The male is perhaps the mostconspicuously marked of all the ground-birds except the bobolink,being black above, bay on the sides, and white beneath. The bay isin compliment to the leaves he is forever scratching among,--theyhave rustled against his breast and sides so long that these partshave taken their color; but whence come the white and the black?The bird seems to be aware that his color betrays him, for thereare few birds in the woods so careful about keeping themselvesscreened from view. When in song, its favorite perch is the top ofsome high bush near to cover. On being disturbed at such times, itpitches down into the brush and is instantly lost to view.

This is the bird that Thomas Jefferson wrote to Wilson about,greatly exciting the latter's curiosity. Wilson was just then uponthe threshold of his career as an ornithologist, and had made adrawing of the Canada jay which he sent to the President. It was anew bird, and in reply Jefferson called his attention to a "curiousbird" which was everywhere to be heard, but scarcely ever to beseen. He had for twenty years interested the young sportsmen of hisneighborhood to shoot one for him, but without success. "It is inall the forests, from spring to fall," he says in his letter, "andnever but on the tops of the tallest trees, from which itperpetually serenades us with some of the sweetest notes, and asclear as those of the nightingale. I have followed it for miles,without ever but once getting a good view of it. It is of the sizeand make of the mockingbird, lightly thrush-colored on the back,and a grayish white on the breast and belly. Mr. Randolph, my son-in-law, was in possession of one which had been shot by aneighbor," etc. Randolph pronounced it a flycatcher, which was agood way wide of the mark. Jefferson must have seen only thefemale, after all his tramp, from his description of the color; buthe was doubtless following his own great thoughts more than thebird, else he would have had an earlier view. The bird was not anew one, but was well known then as the ground-robin. The Presidentput Wilson on the wrong scent by his erroneous description, and itwas a long time before the latter got at the truth of the case. ButJefferson's letter is a good sample of those which specialistsoften receive from intelligent persons who have seen or heardsomething in their line very curious or entirely new, and who setthe man of science agog by a description of the supposed novelty,--a description that generally fits the facts of the case about aswell as your coat fits the chair-back. Strange and curious thingsin the air, and in the water, and in the earth beneath, are seenevery day except by those who are looking for them, namely, thenaturalists. When Wilson or Audubon gets his eye on the unknownbird, the illusion vanishes, and your phenomenon turns out to beone of the commonplaces of the fields or woods.

A prominent April bird, that one does not have to go to the woodsor away from his own door to see and hear, is the hardy and ever-welcome meadowlark. What a twang there is about this bird, and whatvigor! It smacks of the soil. It is the winged embodiment of thespirit of our spring meadows. What emphasis in its _"z-d-t, z-d-t"_and what character in its long, piercing note! Its straight,tapering, sharp beak is typical of its voice. Its note goes like ashaft from a crossbow; it is a little too sharp and piercing whennear at hand, but, heard in the proper perspective, it is eminentlymelodious and pleasing. It is one of the major notes of the fieldsat this season. In fact, it easily dominates all others. _"Springo' the year! spring o' the year!"_ it says, with a long-drawnbreath, a little plaintive, but not complaining or melancholy. Attimes it indulges in something much more intricate and lark-likewhile hovering on the wing in midair, but a song is beyond thecompass of its instrument, and the attempt usually ends in abreakdown. A clear, sweet, strong, high-keyed note, uttered fromsome knoll or rock, or stake in the fence, is its proper vocalperformance. It has the build and walk and flight of the quail andthe grouse. It gets up before you in much the same manner, andfalls an easy prey to the crack shot. Its yellow breast, surmountedby a black crescent, it need not be ashamed to turn to the morningsun, while its coat of mottled gray is in perfect keeping with thestubble amid which it walks. The two lateral white quills in itstail seem strictly in character. These quills spring from a dashof scorn and defiance in the bird's make-up. By the aid of these,it can almost emit a flash as it struts about the fields and jerksout its sharp notes. They give a rayed, a definite and piquantexpression to its movements. This bird is not properly a lark, buta starling, say the ornithologists, though it is lark-like in itshabits, being a walker and entirely a ground-bird. Its color alsoallies it to the true lark. I believe there is no bird in theEnglish or European fields that answers to this hardy pedestrian ofour meadows. He is a true American, and his note one of ourcharacteristic April sounds.

Another marked April note, proceeding sometimes from the meadows,but more frequently from the rough pastures and borders of thewoods, is the call of the high-hole, or golden-shafted woodpecker.It is quite as strong as that of the meadowlark, but not so long-drawn and piercing. It is a succession of short notes rapidlyuttered, as if the bird said _"if-if-if-if-if-if-if."_ The notesof the ordinary downy and hairy woodpeckers suggest, in some way.the sound of a steel punch; but that of the high-hole is muchsofter, and strikes on the ear with real springtime melody. Thehigh-hole is not so much a wood-pecker as he is a ground-pecker. Hesubsists largely on ants and crickets, and does not appear tillthey are to be found.

In Solomon's description of spring, the voice of the turtle isprominent, but our turtle, or mourning dove, though it arrives inApril, can hardly be said to contribute noticeably to the open-airsounds. Its call is so vague, and soft, and mournful,--in fact, soremote and diffused,--that few persons ever hear it at all.

Such songsters as the cow blackbird are noticeable at this season,though they take a back seat a little later. It utters a peculiarlyliquid April sound. Indeed, one would think its crop was full ofwater, its notes so bubble up and regurgitate, and are deliveredwith such an apparent stomachic contraction. This bird is the onlyfeathered polygamist we have. The females are greatly in excess ofthe males, and the latter are usually attended by three or four ofthe former. As soon as the other birds begin to build, they are onthe _qui vive,_ prowling about like gypsies, not to steal the youngof others, but to steal their eggs into other birds' nests, and soshirk the labor and responsibility of hatching and rearing theirown young. As these birds do not mate, and as therefore there canbe little or no rivalry or competition between the males, onewonders--in view of Darwin's teaching--why one sex should havebrighter and richer plumage than the other, which is the fact. Themales are easily distinguished from the dull and faded females bytheir deep glossy-black coats.

The April of English literature corresponds nearly to our May. InGreat Britain, the swallow and the cuckoo usually arrive by themiddle of April; with us, their appearance is a week or two later.Our April, at its best, is a bright, laughing face under a hood ofsnow, like the English March, but presenting sharper contrasts, agreater mixture of smiles and tears and icy looks than are known toour ancestral climate. Indeed, Winter sometimes retraces his stepsin this month, and unburdens himself of the snows that the previouscold has kept back; but we are always sure of a number of radiant,equable days,--days that go before the bud, when the sun embracesthe earth with fervor and determination. How his beams pour intothe woods till the mould under the leaves is warm and emits anodor! The waters glint and sparkle, the birds gather in groups, andeven those unused to singing find a voice. On the streets of thecities, what a flutter, what bright looks and gay colors! I recallone preëminent day of this kind last April. I made a note of it inmy note-book. The earth seemed suddenly to emerge from a wildernessof clouds and chilliness into one of these blue sunlit spaces. Howthe voyagers rejoiced! Invalids came forth, old men sauntered downthe street, stocks went up, and the political outlook brightened.

Such days bring out the last of the hibernating animals. Thewoodchuck unrolls and creeps out of his den to see if his cloverhas started yet. The torpidity leaves the snakes and the turtles,and they come forth and bask in the sun. There is nothing so small,nothing so great, that it does not respond to these celestialspring days, and give the pendulum of life a fresh start.

April is also the month of the new furrow. As soon as the frost isgone and the ground settled, the plow is started upon the hill, andat each bout I see its brightened mould-board flash in the sun.Where the last remnants of the snowdrift lingered yesterday theplow breaks the sod to-day. Where the drift was deepest the grassis pressed flat, and there is a deposit of sand and earth blownfrom the fields to windward. Line upon line the turf is reversed,until there stands out of the neutral landscape a ruddy squarevisible for miles, or until the breasts of the broad hills glowlike the breasts of the robins.

Then who would not have a garden in April? to rake together therubbish and burn it up, to turn over the renewed soil, to scatterthe rich compost, to plant the first seed, or bury the first tuber!It is not the seed that is planted, any more than it is I that isplanted; it is not the dry stalks and weeds that are burned up, anymore than it is my gloom and regrets that are consumed. An Aprilsmoke makes a clean harvest.

I think April is the best month to be born in. One is just in time,so to speak, to catch the first train, which is made up in thismonth. My April chickens always turn out best. They get an earlystart; they have rugged constitutions. Late chickens cannot standthe heavy dews, or withstand the predaceous hawks. In April allnature starts with you. You have not come out of your hibernaculumtoo early or too late; the time is ripe, and, if you do not keeppace with the rest, why, the fault is not in the season.

V SPRING POEMS

There is no month oftener on the tongues of the poets than April.It is the initiative month; it opens the door of the seasons; theinterest and expectations of the untried, the untasted, lurk in it,

"From you have I been absent in the spring,"

says Shakespeare in one of his sonnets,--

"When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything, That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him."

The following poem, from Tennyson's "In Memoriam," might be headed"April," and serve as descriptive of parts of our season:--

"Now fades the last long streak of snow, Now bourgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow.

"Now rings the woodland loud and long, The distance takes a lovelier hue, And drowned in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song.

"Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, The flocks are whiter down the vale, And milkier every milky sail On winding stream or distant sea;

"Where now the sea-mew pipes, or dives In yonder greening gleam, and fly The happy birds, that change their sky To build and brood; that live their lives

"From land to land; and in my breast Spring wakens too; and my regret Becomes an April violet, And buds and blossoms like the rest."

In the same poem the poet asks:--

"Can trouble live with April days?"

Yet they are not all jubilant chords that this season awakens.Occasionally there is an undertone of vague longing and sadness,akin to that which one experiences in autumn. Hope for a momentassumes the attitude of memory and stands with reverted look. Thehaze, that in spring as well as in fall sometimes descends andenvelops all things, has in it in some way the sentiment of music,of melody, and awakens pensive thoughts. Elizabeth Akers, in her"April," has recognized and fully expressed this feeling. I givethe first and last stanzas:--

"The strange, sweet days are here again, The happy-mournful days; The songs which trembled on our lips Are half complaint, half praise.

"Swing, robin, on the budded sprays, And sing your blithest tune;-- Help us across these homesick days Into the joy of June!"

This poet has also given a touch of spring in her "March," which,however, should be written "April" in the New England climate:--

"The brown buds thicken on the trees, Unbound, the free streams sing, As March leads forth across the leas The wild and windy spring.

"Where in the fields the melted snow Leaves hollows warm and wet, Ere many days will sweetly blow The first blue violet."

But on the whole the poets have not been eminently successful indepicting spring. The humid season, with its tender, melting bluesky, its fresh, earthy smells, its new furrow, its few simple signsand awakenings here and there, and its strange feeling of unrest,--how difficult to put its charms into words! None of the so-calledpastoral poets have succeeded in doing it. That is the best part ofspring which escapes a direct and matter-of-fact description ofher. There is more of spring in a line or two of Chaucer andSpenser than in the elaborate portraits of her by Thomson or Pope,because the former had spring in their hearts, and the latter onlyin their inkhorns. Nearly all Shakespeare's songs are springsongs,--full of the banter, the frolic, and the love-making of theearly season. What an unloosed current, too, of joy and fresh newlife and appetite in Burns!

In spring everything has such a margin! there are such spaces ofsilence! The influences are at work underground. Our delight is ina few things. The drying road is enough; a single wild flower, thenote of the first bird, the partridge drumming in the April woods,the restless herds, the sheep steering for the uplands, the cowlowing in the highway or hiding her calf in the bushes, the firstfires, the smoke going up through the shining atmosphere, from theburning of rubbish in gardens and old fields,--each of these simplethings fills the breast with yearning and delight, for they aretokens of the spring. The best spring poems have this singlenessand sparseness. Listen to Solomon: "For lo, the winter is past, therain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time ofthe singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heardin the land." In Wordsworth are some things that breathe the air ofspring. These lines, written in early spring, afford a goodspecimen:--

"I heard a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind."

"To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man.

"Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; And 't is my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes.

"The birds around me hopped and played, Their thoughts I cannot measure: But the least motion which they made It seemed a thrill of pleasure."

Or these from another poem, written in his usual study, "Out-of-Doors," and addressed to his sister:--

"It is the first mild day of March, Each minute sweeter than before; The redbreast sings from the tall larch That stands beside the door.

"There is a blessing in the air, Which seems a sense of joy to yield To the bare trees, and mountains bare, And grass in the green field.

. . . . . . . . .

"Love, now a universal birth, From heart to heart is stealing, From earth to man, from man to earth; It is the hour of feeling.

"One moment now may give us more Than years of toiling reason: Our minds shall drink at every pore The spirit of the season."

It is the simplicity of such lines, like the naked branches of thetrees or the unclothed fields, and the spring-like depth of feelingand suggestion they hold, that make them so appropriate to thisseason.

At this season I often find myself repeating these lines of hisalso:--

"My heart leaps up, when I behold A rainbow in the sky; So was it, when my life began; So is it, now I am a man; So be it, when I shall grow old, Or let me die!"

Though there are so few good poems especially commemorative of thespring, there have no doubt been spring poets,--poets with suchnewness and fullness of life, and such quickening power, that theworld is re-created, as it were, beneath their touch. Of coursethis is in a measure so with all real poets. But the difference Iwould indicate may exist between poets of the same or nearly thesame magnitude. Thus, in this light Tennyson is an autumnal poet,mellow and dead-ripe, and was so from the first; while Wordsworthhas much more of the spring in him, is nearer the bone of thingsand to primitive conditions.

Among the old poems, one which seems to me to have much of thecharm of springtime upon it is the story of Cupid and Psyche inApuleius. The songs, gambols, and wooings of the early birds arenot more welcome and suggestive. How graceful and airy, and yetwhat a tender, profound, human significance it contains! But thegreat vernal poem, doubly so in that it is the expression of thespringtime of the race, the boyhood of man as well, is the Iliad ofHomer. What faith, what simple wonder, what unconscious strength,what beautiful savagery, what magnanimous enmity,--a very paradiseof war!

Though so young a people, there is not much of the feeling ofspring in any of our books. The muse of our poets is wise ratherthan joyous. There is no excess or extravagance or unruliness inher. There are spring sounds and tokens in Emerson's "May-Day:"--

"April cold with dropping rain Willows and lilacs brings again, The whistle of returning birds, And trumpet-lowing of the herds. The scarlet maple-keys betray What potent blood hath modest May, What fiery force the earth renews, The wealth of forms, the flush of hues; What joy in rosy waves outpoured Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord."

But this is not spring in the blood. Among the works of our youngand rising poets, I am not certain but that Mr. Gilder's "New Day"is entitled to rank as a spring poem in the sense in which I amspeaking. It is full of gayety and daring, and full of the recklessabandon of the male bird when he is winning his mate. It is fullalso of the tantalizing suggestiveness, the half-lights and shades,of April and May.

Of prose poets who have the charm of the springtime upon them, thebest recent example I know of is Björnson, the Norwegian romancist.What especially makes his books spring-like is their freshness andsweet good faith. There is also a reticence and an unwroughtsuggestiveness about them that is like the promise of buds andearly flowers. Of Turgenieff, the Russian, much the same thingmight be said. His stories are simple and elementary, and have noneof the elaborate hair-splitting and forced hot-house character ofthe current English or American novel. They spring from stronger,more healthful and manly conditions, and have a force in them thatis like a rising, incoming tide.

VI OUR RURAL DIVINITY

I wonder that Wilson Flagg did not include the cow among his"Picturesque Animals," for that is where she belongs. She has notthe classic beauty of the horse, but in picture-making qualitiesshe is far ahead of him. Her shaggy, loose-jointed body; herirregular, sketchy outlines, like those of the landscape,--thehollows and ridges, the slopes and prominences; her tossing horns,her bushy tail, tier swinging gait, her tranquil, ruminatinghabits,--all tend to make her an object upon which the artist eyeloves to dwell. The artists are forever putting her into pictures,too. In rural landscape scenes she is an important feature. Beholdher grazing in the pastures and on the hillsides, or along banks ofstreams, or ruminating under wide-spreading trees, or standingbelly-deep in the creek or pond, or lying upon the smooth places inthe quiet summer afternoon, the day's grazing done, and waiting tobe summoned home to be milked; and again in the twilight lying uponthe level summit of the hill, or where the sward is thickest andsoftest; or in winter a herd of them filing along toward the springto drink, or being "foddered" from the stack in the field upon thenew snow,--surely the cow is a picturesque animal, and all hergoings and comings are pleasant to behold.

I looked into Hamerton's clever book on the domestic animals also,expecting to find my divinity duly celebrated, but he passes her byand contemplates the bovine qualities only as they appear in the oxand the bull.

Neither have the poets made much of the cow, but have rather dweltupon the steer, or the ox yoked to the plow. I recall this touchfrom Emerson:--

"The heifer that lows in the upland farm, Far heard, lows not thine ear to charm."

But the ear is charmed, nevertheless, especially if it be not toonear, and the air be still and dense, or hollow, as the farmersays. And again, if it be springtime and she task that powerfulbellows of hers to its utmost capacity, how round the sound is, andhow far it goes over the hills!

The cow has at least four tones or lows. First, there is heralarmed or distressed low when deprived of her calf, or whenseparated from her mates,--her low of affection. Then there is hercall of hunger, a petition for food, sometimes full of impatience,or her answer to the farmer's call, full of eagerness. Then thereis that peculiar frenzied bawl she utters on smelling blood, whichcauses every member of the herd to lift its head and hasten to thespot,--the native cry of the clan. When she is gored or in greatdanger she bawls also, but that is different. And lastly, there isthe long, sonorous volley she lets off on the hills or in the yard,or along the highway, and which seems to be expressive of a kind ofunrest and vague longing,--the longing of the imprisoned Io for herlost identity. She sends her voice forth so that every god on MountOlympus can hear her plaint. She makes this sound in the morning,especially in the spring, as she goes forth to graze.

One of our rural poets, Myron Benton, whose verse often has theflavor of sweet cream, has written some lines called "Rumination,"in which the cow is the principal figure, and with which I ampermitted to adorn my theme. The poet first gives his attention toa little brook that "breaks its shallow gossip" at his feet and"drowns the oriole's voice:"--

"But moveth not that wise and ancient cow, Who chews her juicy cud so languid now Beneath her favorite elm, whose drooping bough Lulls all but inward vision fast asleep: But still, her tireless tail a pendulum sweep Mysterious clock-work guides, and some hid pulley Her drowsy cud, each moment, raises duly.

"Of this great, wondrous world she has seen more Than you, my little brook, and cropped its store Of succulent grass on many a mead and lawn; And strayed to distant uplands in the dawn. And she has had some dark experience Of graceless man's ingratitude; and hence Her ways have not been ways of pleasantness, Nor all her paths of peace. But her distress And grief she has lived past; your giddy round Disturbs her not, for she is learned profound In deep brahminical philosophy. She chews the cud of sweetest revery Above your worldly prattle, brooklet merry, Oblivious of all things sublunary."

The cow figures in Grecian mythology, and in the Orientalliterature is treated as a sacred animal. "The clouds are cows andthe rain milk." I remember what Herodotus says of the Egyptians'worship of heifers and steers; and in the traditions of the Celticnations the cow is regarded as a divinity. In Norse mythology themilk of the cow Andhumbla afforded nourishment to the Frost giants,and it was she that licked into being and into shape a god, thefather of Odin. If anything could lick a god into shape, certainlythe cow could do it. You may see her perform this office for youngTaurus any spring. She licks him out of the fogs and bewildermentsand uncertainties in which he finds himself on first landing uponthese shores, and up onto his feet in an incredibly short time.Indeed, that potent tongue of hers can almost make the dead aliveany day, and the creative lick of the old Scandinavian mother cowis only a large-lettered rendering of the commonest facts.

The horse belongs to the fiery god Mars. He favors war, and is oneof its oldest, most available, and most formidable engines. Thesteed is clothed with thunder, and smells the battle from afar; butthe cattle upon a thousand hills denote that peace and plenty bearsway in the land. The neighing of the horse is a call to battle;but the lowing of old Brockleface in the valley brings the goldenage again. The savage tribes are never without the horse; theScythians are all mounted; but the cow would tame and humanizethem. When the Indians will cultivate the cow, I shall think theircivilization fairly begun. Recently, when the horses were sick withthe epizoötic, and the oxen came to the city and helped to do theirwork, what an Arcadian air again filled the streets! But the dearold oxen,--how awkward and distressed they looked! Juno wept in theface of every one of them. The horse is a true citizen, and isentirely at home in the paved streets; but the ox,--what a completeembodiment of all rustic and rural things! Slow, deliberate, thick-skinned, powerful, hulky, ruminating, fragrant-breathed, when hecame to town the spirit and suggestion of all Georgics and Bucolicscame with him. O citizen, was it only a plodding, unsightly brutethat went by? Was there no chord in your bosom, long silent, thatsweetly vibrated at the sight of that patient, Herculean couple?Did you smell no hay or cropped herbage, see no summer pastureswith circles of cool shade, hear no voice of herds among the hills?They were very likely the only horses your grandfather ever had.Not much trouble to harness and unharness them. Not much vanity onthe road in those days. They did all the work on the early pioneerfarm. They were the gods whose rude strength first broke the soil.They could live where the moose and the deer could. If there was noclover or timothy to be had, then the twigs of the basswood andbirch would do. Before there were yet fields given up to grass,they found ample pasturage in the woods. Their wide-spreading hornsgleamed in the duskiness, and their paths and the paths of the cowsbecame the future roads and highways, or even the streets of greatcities.

All the descendants of Odin show a bovine trace, and cherish andcultivate the cow. In Norway she is a great feature. ProfessorBoyesen describes what he calls the _saeter_, the spring migrationof the dairy and dairymaids, with all the appurtenances of butterand cheese making, from the valleys to the distant plains upon themountains, where the grass keeps fresh and tender till fall. It isthe great event of the year in all the rural districts. Nearly thewhole family go with the cattle and remain with them. At eveningthe cows are summoned home with a long horn, called the _loor,_ inthe hands of the milkmaid. The whole herd comes winding down themountain-side toward the _saeter_ in obedience to the mellow blast.

What were those old Vikings but thick-hided bulls that delighted innothing so much as goring each other? And has not the charge ofbeefiness been brought much nearer home to us than that? But aboutall the northern races there is something that is kindred to cattlein the best sense,--something in their art and literature that isessentially pastoral, sweet-breathed, continent, dispassionate,ruminating, wide-eyed, soft-voiced,--a charm of kine, the virtue ofbrutes.

The cow belongs more especially to the northern peoples, to theregion of the good, green grass. She is the true _grazing_ animal.That broad, smooth, always dewy nose of hers is just the suggestionof greensward. She caresses the grass; she sweeps off the ends ofthe leaves; she reaps it with the soft sickle of her tongue. Shecrops close, but she does not bruise or devour the turf like thehorse. She is the sward's best friend, and will make it thick andsmooth as a carpet.

"The turfy mountains where live the nibbling sheep"

are not for her. Her muzzle is too blunt; then she does not _bite_as do the sheep; she has no upper teeth; she _crops._ But on thelower slopes, and margins, and rich bottoms, she is at home. Wherethe daisy and the buttercup and clover bloom, and where corn willgrow, is her proper domain. The agriculture of no country can longthrive without her. Not only a large part of the real, but much ofthe potential, wealth of the land is wrapped up in her.

Then the cow has given us some good words and hints. How could weget along without the parable of the cow that gave a good pail ofmilk and then kicked it over? One could hardly keep house withoutit. Or the parable of the cream and the skimmed milk, or of thebuttered bread? We know, too, through her aid, what the horns ofthe dilemma mean, and what comfort there is in the juicy cud ofreverie.

I have said the cow has not been of much service to the poets, andyet I remember that Jean Ingelow could hardly have managed her"High Tide" without "Whitefoot" and "Lightfoot" and "Cusha! Cusha!Cusha! calling;" or Trowbridge his "Evening at the Farm," in whichthe real call of the American farm-boy of "Co', boss! Co', boss!Co', Co'," makes a very musical refrain.

Tennyson's charming "Milking Song" is another flower of poesy thathas sprung up in my divinity's footsteps.

What a variety of individualities a herd of cows presents when youhave come to know them all, not only in form and color, but inmanners and disposition! Some are timid and awkward, and the buttof the whole herd. Some remind you of deer. Some have an expressionin the face like certain persons you have known. A petted and well-fed cow has a benevolent and gracious look; an ill-used and poorlyfed one, a pitiful and forlorn look. Some cows have a masculine orox expression; others are extremely feminine. The latter are theones for milk. Some cows will kick like a horse; some jump fenceslike deer. Every herd has its ringleader, its unruly spirit,--onethat plans all the mischief, and leads the rest through the fencesinto the grain or into the orchard. This one is usually quitedifferent from the master spirit, the "boss of the yard." Thelatter is generally the most peaceful and law-abiding cow in thelot, and the least bullying and quarrelsome. But she is not to betrifled with; her will is law; the whole herd give way before her,those that have crossed horns with her and those that have not, butyielded their allegiance without crossing. I remember such a oneamong my father's milkers when I was a boy,--a slender-horned,deep-shouldered, large-uddered, dewlapped old cow that we alwaysput first in the long stable, so she could not have a cow on eachside of her to forage upon; for the master is yielded to no less inthe stanchions than in the yard. She always had the first placeanywhere. She had her choice of standing-room in the milking-yard,and when she wanted to lie down there or in the fields the best andsoftest spot was hers. When the herd were foddered from the stackor barn, or fed with pumpkins in the fall, she was always firstserved. Her demeanor was quiet but impressive. She never bullied orgored her mates, but literally ruled them with the breath of hernostrils. If any new-comer or ambitious younger cow, however,chafed under her supremacy, she was ever ready to make good herclaims. And with what spirit she would fight when openlychallenged! She was a whirlwind of pluck and valor; and not afterone defeat or two defeats would she yield the championship. Theboss cow, when overcome, seems to brood over her disgrace, and dayafter day will meet her rival in fierce combat.

A friend of mine, a pastoral philosopher, whom I have consulted inregard to the master cow, thinks it is seldom the case that onerules all the herd, if it number many, but that there is often onethat will rule nearly all. "Curiously enough," he says, "a caselike this will often occur: No. 1 will whip No. 2; No. 2 whips No.3; and No. 3 whips No. 1; so around in a circle. This is not amistake; it is often the case. I remember," he continued, "we oncehad feeding out of a large bin in the centre of the yard six cowswho mastered right through in succession from No. 1 to No. 6;_but_ No. 6 _paid off the score by whipping No. 1._ I often watchedthem when they were all trying to feed out of the box, and ofcourse trying, dog-in-the-manger fashion, each to prevent any othershe could. They would often get in the order to do it verysystematically, since they could keep rotating about the box tillthe chain happened to get broken somewhere, when there would beconfusion. Their mastership, you know, like that between nations,is constantly changing. There are always Napoleons who hold theirown through many vicissitudes; but the ordinary cow is continuallyliable to lose her foothold. Some cow she has always despised, andhas often sent tossing across the yard at her horns' ends, somepleasant morning will return the compliment and pay off oldscores."

But my own observation has been that, in herds in which there havebeen no important changes for several years, the question of mightgets pretty well settled, and some one cow becomes the acknowledgedruler.

The bully of the yard is never the master, but usually a second orthird rate pusher that never loses an opportunity to hook thosebeneath her, or to gore the masters if she can get them in a tightplace. If such a one can get loose in the stable, she is quitecertain to do mischief. She delights to pause in the open bars andturn and keep those behind her at bay till she sees a pair ofthreatening horns pressing toward her, when she quickly passes on.As one cow masters all, so there is one cow that is mastered byall. These are the two extremes of the herd, the head and the tail.Between them are all grades of authority, with none so poor buthath some poorer to do her reverence.

The cow has evidently come down to us from a wild or semi-wildstate; perhaps is a descendant of those wild, shaggy cattle ofwhich a small band is still preserved in some nobleman's park inScotland. Cuvier seems to have been of this opinion. One of theways in which her wild instincts still crop out is the dispositionshe shows in spring to hide her calf,--a common practice among thewild herds. Her wild nature would be likely to come to the surfaceat this crisis if ever; and I have known cows that practiced greatsecrecy in dropping their calves. As their time approached, theygrew restless, a wild and excited look was upon them; and if leftfree, they generally set out for the woods, or for some othersecluded spot. After the calf is several hours old, and has gotupon its feet and had its first meal, the dam by some sign commandsit to lie down and remain quiet while she goes forth to feed. Ifthe calf is approached at such time, it plays "possum," pretends tobe dead or asleep, till, on finding this ruse does not succeed, itmounts to its feet, bleats loudly and fiercely, and chargesdesperately upon the intruder. But it recovers from this wild scarein a little while, and never shows signs of it again.

The habit of the cow, also, in eating the placenta, looks to melike a vestige of her former wild instincts,--the instinct toremove everything that would give the wild beasts a clew or ascent, and so attract them to her helpless young.

How wise and sagacious the cows become that run upon the street, orpick their living along the highway! The mystery of gates and barsis at last solved to them. They ponder over them by night, theylurk about them by day, till they acquire a new sense,--till theybecome _en rapport_ with them and know when they are open andunguarded. The garden gate, if it open into the highway at anypoint, is never out of the mind of these roadsters, or out of theircalculations. They calculate upon the chances of its being leftopen a certain number of times in the season; and if it be butonce, and only for five minutes, your cabbage and sweet cornsuffer. What villager, or countryman either, has not been awakenedat night by the squeaking and crunching of those piratical jawsunder the window, or in the direction of the vegetable patch? Ihave had the cows, after they had eaten up my garden, break intothe stable where my own milcher was tied, and gore her and devourher meal. Yes, life presents but one absorbing problem to thestreet cow, and that is how to get into your garden. She catchesglimpses of it over the fence or through the pickets, and herimagination or her epigastrium is inflamed. When the spot issurrounded by a high board fence, I think I have seen her peepingat the cabbages through a knothole. At last she learns to open thegate. It is a great triumph of bovine wit. She does it with herhorn or her nose, or may be with her ever-ready tongue. I doubt ifshe has ever yet penetrated the mystery of the newer patentfastenings; but the old-fashioned thumb-latch she can see through,give her time enough.

A large, lank, muley or polled cow used to annoy me in this waywhen I was a dweller in a certain pastoral city. I more than halfsuspected she was turned in by some one; so one day I watched.Presently I heard the gate-latch rattle; the gate swung open, andin walked the old buffalo. On seeing me she turned and ran like ahorse. I then fastened the gate on the inside and watched again.After long waiting the old cow came quickly round the corner andapproached the gate. She lifted the latch with her nose. Then, asthe gate did not move, she lifted it again and again. Then shegently nudged it. Then, the obtuse gate not taking the hint, shebutted it gently, then harder and still harder, till it rattledagain. At this juncture I emerged from my hiding-place, when theold villain scampered off with great precipitation. She knew shewas trespassing, and she had learned that there were usually someswift penalties attached to this pastime.

I have owned but three cows and loved but one. That was the firstone, Chloe, a bright red, curly-pated, golden-skinned Devonshirecow, that an ocean steamer landed for me upon the banks of thePotomac one bright May Day many clover summers ago. She came fromthe north, from the pastoral regions of the Catskills, to grazeupon the broad commons of the national capital. I was then thefortunate and happy lessee of an old place with an acre of groundattached, almost within the shadow of the dome of the Capitol.Behind a high but aged and decrepit board fence I indulged my ruraland unclerical tastes. I could look up from my homely tasks andcast a potato almost in the midst of that cataract of marble stepsthat flows out of the north wing of the patriotic pile. Ah! whenthat creaking and sagging back gate closed behind me in theevening, I was happy; and when it opened for my egress thence inthe morning, I was not happy. Inside that gate was a miniaturefarm, redolent of homely, primitive life, a tumble-down house andstables and implements of agriculture and horticulture, broods ofchickens, and growing pumpkins, and a thousand antidotes to theweariness of an artificial life. Outside of it were the marble andiron palaces, the paved and blistering streets, and the high,vacant mahogany desk of a government clerk. In that ancientinclosure I took an earth bath twice a day. I planted myself asdeep in the soil as I could, to restore the normal tone andfreshness of my system, impaired by the above-mentioned governmentmahogany. I have found there is nothing like the earth to draw thevarious social distempers out of one. The blue devils take flightat once if they see you mean to bury them and make compost of them.Emerson intimates that the scholar had better not try to have twogardens; but I could never spend an hour hoeing up dock and red-root and twitch-grass without in some way getting rid of many weedsand fungi, unwholesome growths, that a petty indoor life is foreverfostering in my moral and intellectual nature.

But the finishing touch was not given till Chloe came. She was thejewel for which this homely setting waited. My agriculture had someobject then. The old gate never opened with such alacrity as whenshe paused before it. How we waited for her coming! Should I sendDrewer, the colored patriarch, for her? No; the master of the househimself should receive Juno at the capital.

"One cask for you," said the clerk, referring to the steamer billof lading.

"Then I hope it's a cask of milk," I said. "I expected a cow."

"One cask, it says here."

"Well, let's see it; I'll warrant it has horns and is tied by arope;" which proved to be the case, for there stood the only objectthat bore my name, chewing its cud, on the forward deck. How sheliked the voyage I could not find out; but she seemed to relish somuch the feeling of solid ground beneath her feet once more, thatshe led me a lively step all the way home. She cut capers in frontof the White House, and tried twice to wind me up in the rope as wepassed the Treasury. She kicked up her heels on the broad avenue,and became very coltish as she came under the walls of the Capitol.But that night the long-vacant stall in the old stable was filled,and the next morning the coffee had met with a change of heart. Ihad to go out twice with the lantern and survey my treasure beforeI went to bed. Did she not come from the delectable mountains, anddid I not have a sort of filial regard for her as toward my foster-mother?

This was during the Arcadian age at the capital, before the easy-going Southern ways had gone out and the prim new Northern ways hadcome in, and when the domestic animals were treated withdistinguished consideration and granted the freedom of the city.There was a charm of cattle in the street and upon the commons;goats cropped your rosebushes through the pickets, and nooned uponyour front porch; and pigs dreamed Arcadian dreams under yourgarden fence, or languidly frescoed it with pigments from thenearest pool. It was a time of peace; it was the poor man's goldenage. Your cow, your goat, your pig, led vagrant, wandering lives,and picked up a subsistence wherever they could, like the bees,which was almost everywhere. Your cow went forth in the morning andcame home fraught with milk at night, and you never troubledyourself where she went or how far she roamed.

Chloe took very naturally to this kind of life. At first I had togo with her a few times and pilot her to the nearest commons, andthen I left her to her own wit, which never failed her. Whatadventures she had, what acquaintances she made, how far shewandered, I never knew. I never came across her in my walks orrambles. Indeed, on several occasions I thought I would look her upand see her feeding in national pastures, but I never could findher. There were plenty of cows, but they were all strangers. Butpunctually, between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, herwhite horns would be seen tossing above the gate and her impatientlow be heard. Sometimes, when I turned her forth in the morning,she would pause and apparently consider which way she would go.Should she go toward Kendall Green to-day, or follow the Tiber, orover by the Big Spring, or out around Lincoln Hospital? She seldomreached a conclusion till she had stretched forth her neck andblown a blast on her trumpet that awoke the echoes in the verylantern on the dome of the Capitol. Then, after one or two licks,she would disappear around the corner. Later in the season, whenthe grass was parched or poor on the commons, and the corn andcabbage tempting in the garden, Chloe was loath to depart in themorning, and her deliberations were longer than ever, and veryoften I had to aid her in coming to a decision.

For two summers she was a wellspring of pleasure and profit in myfarm of one acre, when, in an evil moment, I resolved to part withher and try another. In an evil moment I say, for from that time myluck in cattle left me. The goddess never forgave me the executionof that rash and cruel resolve.

The day is indelibly stamped on my memory when I exposed my Chloefor sale in the public market-place. It was in November, a bright,dreamy, Indian summer day. A sadness oppressed me, not unmixed withguilt and remorse. An old Irish woman came to the market also withher pets to sell, a sow and five pigs, and took up a position nextme. We condoled with each other; we bewailed the fate of ourdarlings together; we berated in chorus the white-aproned butblood-stained fraternity who prowled about us. When she went awayfor a moment I minded the pigs, and when I strolled about sheminded my cow. How shy the innocent beast was of those carnalmarketmen! How she would shrink away from them! When they put out ahand to feel her condition she would "scrooch" down her back, orbend this way or that, as if the hand were a branding-iron. So longas I stood by her head she felt safe--deluded creature!--and chewedthe cud of sweet content; but the moment I left her side she seemedfilled with apprehension, and followed me with her eyes, lowingsoftly and entreatingly till I returned.

At last the money was counted out for her, and her rope surrenderedto the hand of another. How that last look of alarm andincredulity, which I caught as I turned for a parting glance, wentto my heart!

Her stall was soon filled, or partly filled, and this time with anative,--a specimen of what may be called the cornstalk breed ofVirginia; a slender, furtive, long-geared heifer just verging oncowhood, that in spite of my best efforts would wear a pinched andhungry look. She evidently inherited a humped back. It was a familytrait, and evidence of the purity of her blood. For the nativeblooded cow of Virginia, from shivering over half rations ofcornstalks in the open air during those bleak and windy winters,and roaming over those parched fields in summer, has come to havesome marked features. For one thing, her pedal extremities seemlengthened; for another, her udder does not impede her traveling;for a third, her backbone inclines strongly to the curve; then, shedespiseth hay. This last is a sure test. Offer a thorough-bredVirginia cow hay, and she will laugh in your face; but rattle thehusks or shucks, and she knows you to be her friend.

The new-comer even declined corn-meal at first. She eyed itfurtively, then sniffed it suspiciously, but finally discoveredthat it bore some relation to her native "shucks," when she fell toeagerly.

I cherish the memory of this cow, however, as the most affectionatebrute I ever knew. Being deprived of her calf, she transferred heraffections to her master, and would fain have made a calf of him,lowing in the most piteous and inconsolable manner when he was outof her sight, hardly forgetting her grief long enough to eat hermeal, and entirely neglecting her beloved husks. Often in themiddle of the night she would set up that sonorous lamentation, andcontinue it till sleep was chased from every eye in the household.This generally had the effect of bringing the object of heraffection before her, but in a mood anything but filial orcomforting. Still, at such times a kick seemed a comfort to her,and she would gladly have kissed the rod that was the instrument ofmy midnight wrath.

But her tender star was destined soon to a fatal eclipse. Beingtied with too long a rope on one occasion during my temporaryabsence, she got her head into the meal-barrel, and stopped nottill she had devoured nearly half a bushel of dry meal. Thesingularly placid and benevolent look that beamed from the meal-besmeared face when I discovered her was something to beremembered. For the first time, also, her spinal column came nearassuming a horizontal line.But the grist proved too much for her frail mill, and her demisetook place on the third day, not of course without some attempt torelieve her on my part. I gave her, as is usual in suchemergencies, everything I "could think of," and everything myneighbors could think of, besides some fearful prescriptions whichI obtained from a German veterinary surgeon, but to no purpose. Iimagined her poor maw distended and inflamed with the baking soddenmass which no physic could penetrate or enliven.

Thus ended my second venture in live-stock. My third, whichfollowed sharp upon the heels of this disaster, was scarcely moreof a success. This time I led to the altar a buffalo cow, as theycall the "muley" down South,--a large, spotted, creamy-skinned cow,with a fine udder, that I persuaded a Jew drover to part with forninety dollars. "Pag like a dish rack (rag)," said he, pointing toher udder after she had been milked. "You vill come pack and gif methe udder ten tollar" (for he had demanded an even hundred), hecontinued, "after you have had her a gouple of days." True, I feltlike returning to him after a "gouple of days," but not to pay theother ten dollars. The cow proved to be as blind as a bat, thoughcapable of counterfeiting the act of seeing to perfection. For didshe not lift up her head and follow with her eyes a dog that scaledthe fence and ran through the other end of the lot, and the nextmoment dash my hopes thus raised by trying to walk over a locust-tree thirty feet high? And when I set the bucket before hercontaining her first mess of meal, she missed it by several inches,and her nose brought up against the ground. Was it a kind of far-sightedness and near blindness? That was it, I think; she hadgenius, but not talent; she could see the man in the moon, but wasquite oblivious to the man immediately in her front. Her eyes weretelescopic and required a long range.

As long as I kept her in the stall, or confined to the inclosure,this strange eclipse of her sight was of little consequence. Butwhen spring came, and it was time for her to go forth and seek herlivelihood in the city's waste places, I was embarrassed. Into whatremote corners or into what _terra incognita_ might she not wander!There was little doubt but that she would drift around home in thecourse of the summer, or perhaps as often as every week or two; butcould she be trusted to find her way back every night? Perhaps shecould be taught. Perhaps her other senses were acute enough tocompensate in a measure for her defective vision. So I gave herlessons in the topography of the country. I led her forth to grazefor a few hours each day and led her home again. Then I left her tocome home alone, which feat she accomplished very encouragingly.She came feeling her way along, stepping very high, but apparentlya most diligent and interested sight-seer. But she was not sure ofthe right house when she got to it, though she stared at it veryhard.

Again I turned her forth, and again she came back, her telescopiceyes apparently of some service to her. On the third day, there wasa fierce thunder-storm late in the afternoon, and old buffalo didnot come home. It had evidently scattered and bewildered whatlittle wits she had. Being barely able to navigate those streets ona calm day, what could she be expected to do in a tempest?

After the storm had passed, and near sundown, I set out in quest ofher, but could get no clew. I heard that two cows had been struckby lightning about a mile out on the commons. My conscienceinstantly told me that one of them was mine. It would be a fitclosing of the third act of this pastoral drama. Thitherward I bentmy steps, and there upon the smooth plain I beheld the scorched andswollen forms of two cows slain by thunderbolts, but neither ofthem had ever been mine.

The next day I continued the search, and the next, and the next.Finally I hoisted an umbrella over my head, for the weather hadbecome hot, and set out deliberately and systematically to exploreevery foot of open common on Capitol Hill. I tramped many miles,and found every man's cow but my own,--some twelve or fifteenhundred, I should think. I saw many vagrant boys and Irish andcolored women, nearly all of whom had seen a buffalo cow that veryday that answered exactly to my description, but in such diverseand widely separate places that I knew it was no cow of mine. Andit was astonishing how many times I was myself deceived; how manyrumps or heads, or line backs or white flanks, I saw peeping overknolls, or from behind fences or other objects, that could belongto no cow but mine!

Finally I gave up the search, concluded the cow had been stolen,and advertised her, offering a reward. But days passed, and notidings were obtained. Hope began to burn pretty low,--was indeedon the point of going out altogether,--when one afternoon, as I wasstrolling over the commons (for in my walks I still hovered aboutthe scenes of my lost milcher), I saw the rump of a cow, over agrassy knoll, that looked familiar. Coming nearer, the beast liftedup her head; and, behold! it was she! only a few squares from home,where doubtless she had been most of the time. I had overshot themark in my search. I had ransacked the far-off, and had neglectedthe near-at-hand, as we are so apt to do. But she was ruined as amilcher, and her history thenceforward was brief and touching!

VII BEFORE GENIUS

If there did not something else go to the making of literaturebesides mere literary parts, even the best of them, how long agothe old bards and the Biblical writers would have been supersededby the learned professors and the gentlemanly versifiers of latertimes! Is there to-day a popular poet, using the English language,who does not, in technical acquirements and in the artificialadjuncts of poetry,--rhyme, metre, melody, and especially sweet,dainty fancies,--surpass Europe's and Asia's loftiest and oldest?Indeed, so marked is the success of the latter-day poets in thisrespect, that any ordinary reader may well be puzzled, and ask, ifthe shaggy antique masters are poets, what are the refined andeuphonious producers of our own day?

If we were to inquire what this something else is which isprerequisite to any deep and lasting success in literature, weshould undoubtedly find that it is the man behind the book. It isthe fashion of the day to attribute all splendid results to geniusand culture. But genius and culture are not enough. "All otherknowledge is hurtful to him who has not the science of honesty andgoodness," says Montaigne. The quality of simple manhood, and theuniversal human traits which form the bond of union between man andman,--which form the basis of society, of the family, ofgovernment, of friendship,-- are quite overlooked; and the creditis given to some special facility, or to brilliant and lucky hit.Does any one doubt that the great poets and artists are made upmainly of the most common universal human and heroiccharacteristics?--that in them, though working to other ends, isall that construct the soldier, the sailor, the farmer, thediscoverer, the bringer-to-pass in any field, and that their workis good and enduring in proportion as it is saturated andfertilized by the qualities of these? Good human stock is the maindependence. No great poet ever appeared except from a race of goodfighters, good eaters, good sleepers, good breeders. Literaturedies with the decay of the _un-_literary element. It is not in thespirit of something far away in the clouds or under the moon,something ethereal, visionary, and anti-mundane, that Angelo,Dante, and Shakespeare work, but in the spirit of common Nature andof the homeliest facts; through these, and not away from them, the